10/08/2026
Process writing. Whole language. Multiple intelligences. Thinking hats. Outcomes. Data walls. Growth mindset. HITS. Cognitive load theory. Explicit instruction.
If you have been in a classroom since the 1980s, you have been trained in all of it, mostly without being asked. We laid the whole forty years out as a timeline: forty-nine additions, four withdrawals. Almost nothing was ever taken away.
The full timeline, decade by decade, and what each era left worth keeping:
From process writing to mandated explicit teaching: a decade-by-decade timeline of the professional learning waves Australian teachers have absorbed since the 1980s, what each era left worth keeping, and what it costs that almost none were ever retired.